Dear Family and Friends,

On Monday as I was having my morning tea I heard the distant rumble of Paul's new (to him) Chevy pick-up truck, followed by the rattling of the trailer as he pulled out of the A-frame barn. Our steer was on his way to Fairplay Meat Processing. Until now, the loaded trailer has sat in my driveway overnight. I've kept watch with steers and pigs, listening as they moved about in the squeaky trailer. The longest night was with a restless 500 pound boar. I went out several times to check on him. By 5 am it sounded like he was determined to pound his way out of the trailer. I called Paul who was just getting ready to come over. What a relief when they set off without further incident. Now that the trailer can sit in the A-frame barn (across the upper pasture from my kitchen) I'll no longer keep that vigil. One sign of an expanding operation...

Later in the day we all jumped into the Chevy + trailer to retrieve our two cows. Blue Bell and her heifer Addie have been sojourning with our neighbor's bull. Brad and Bernadette's dairy farm is a few miles up the road from here. I was so impressed by Paul's handling of the new truck and the trailer. Their farm is off a very narrow road so Paul had to drive past their driveway to find a place to turn around on the road so he could approach their driveway from the right angle to back the trailer in. There were 8 or 9 of their heifers in a pasture along the driveway. They followed us down, thinking, perhaps, we were bringing silage or hay for them. We were so glad to see Blue Bell and Addie again. It did not take long to get them loaded into the trailer. The new pick-up has an extended cab, so on the way home I tried out the back seat with Sasha and Madeline. Lots of sideways seat room. Not so much leg room but not bad. Actually kind of fun. The new vehicle is also part of our expanding operation. Paul and Robin intend to use it instead of the big van for winter deliveries to Nashville.

We will repeat the trip to Fairplay later this season with 3 (not-so-little) pigs. Then even later with 6 or 8 lambs. Between those trips the Thanksgiving turkeys will go to a different processor in Bowling Green. Robin does an amazing job negotiating with the processors for appointments at the right intervals as well as managing our freezer space as the meat is sold off. By early December we should be down to what we need for our own use.

Saturday was the last day of our regular market season. (Our 4 week Fall Extension begins next week). A couple of our Glasgow shareholders were reluctant to return their baskets. "Too soon for all that good food to end". I will still be going to Glasgow for a couple weeks with flowers although the late summer drought has kept some of the later plantings from producing the usual abundance of blossoms. Miraculously there is an abundance of butternut squash, peppers, beets, potatoes, and Fall greens.

Earlier this month we harvested the tobacco. The crew worked in pairs. One person chopping down the whole 7 foot high plant, the other spiking the plant onto a "stick" of 6 plants each. The sticks of plants are left in the field to dry. When all the plants are cut, the tobacco is hauled in. The sticks are loaded onto a pipe wagon (flatbed wagon with a frame of pipes spaced so the sticks can be hung across two pipes. Pulling the wagon up to the barn is quite an art. If you jerk the load, the sticks tend to fall off the pipes. The wagon is backed into the barn. Then the teamwork begins. One person unloads one stick at a time. They are quite heavy. That person hands off the stick to a person one level up. The second person hands off to a person on the next level who hands off to the person at the top. Everyone except the first person is balancing on the beams of the barn. It is quite a ballet. Our crew got very good at it. There were huge smiles when all the tobacco was hung and the crew posed for pictures in front of their job very well done. Paul was walking on air for two days.

We are so grateful for the abundance of the season just ended and for the extraordinary interns who have helped us this year. Love, Louise